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FILM; Larry Clark, Moralist, In the Florida Suburbs

By JAMIE MALANOWSKI

Published: July 8, 2001

''BULLY,'' the new film by Larry Clark that opens Friday, is like a cancer drug: powerful, hard to take, necessary. A faithful retelling of an ugly murder of a nasty punk by a bunch of troubled, amoral teenagers that took place in Florida in 1993, ''Bully'' is a ''Lord of the Flies'' for our time, except that the kids who lose their tenuous grip on morality here are not lost in some distant jungle but in the tract houses and strip malls and Pizza Huts of suburbia. A movie filled with nudity, sex scenes and acts of violence large and small, ''Bully'' is in fact a deeply conservative film, one that right-wing radio hosts could chew on for weeks, if they could bring themselves to see it.

''I call myself a moralist and people laugh at me, I swear to God,'' said Mr. Clark, himself laughing at the notion. He is, after all, a famous ex-drug addict and a celebrated artist whose reputation was built on photographs of young people -- naked, on drugs, with guns -- that alternately and in combination shock, repel and attract. He is also the director of ''Kids'' (1995); his first picture, it was another film examination of violent, directionless teenagers. ''My friends actually laughed,'' he said. ''So what are you going to do? Because it is about morality. All of it. Actions have consequences.''

''Bully'' tells the true story of the murder of a high school student, Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl), an act committed by his lifelong best friend, Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro), aided and abetted by his girlfriend Lisa (Rachel Miner) and three other friends. The incident was ugly in itself, but as Mr. Clark discovered when he read the 1998 book ''Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge'' by the journalist Jim Schutze, the story leading up to the murder was just as sordid. ''Bobby was a rotten kid,'' Mr. Clark said. ''He was mean and violent and nasty to everyone, including Marty. But Marty would take it, for whatever reason. Marty could be a good guy when he wasn't with Bobby, but when he was, he became just like Bobby. They would rob cars and steal stuff, they would go to this gay club and hustle gays and beat them up. They picked up one guy and made a porno video of him that they then tried to sell to adult bookstores and make a lot of money. A couple of real jokers.'' Their relationship took a turn when Marty fell in love with Lisa. Bobby welcomed her by viciously abusing her and the others in their set (who have their own awful back stories involving drug addiction, teen prostitution and other crimes), except she did not tolerate it as well as Marty, and suggested solving the problem through murder.

Mr. Clark, unimpressed with the original screenplay, almost passed on the project, until the producer Don Murphy encouraged him to read the book. ''The screenplay had left out all the good stuff,'' Mr. Clark said. The bully was all bad and Marty was an angel. The crimes were eliminated as was any hint of homosexuality; the screenwriters were afraid that they would lose the audience, largely teenagers, who would be put off by the underlying gay theme, Mr. Clark explained. ''I said: 'If you're going to write for the audience, why do it? It's a real story!' ''

Though he specified the material he wanted included, Mr. Clark never got a screenplay that satisfied him, even when it came time to shoot. ''Basically,'' he said, ''I threw the script away and I shot the book. I had my assistant actually type out the book, and we would actually work from that.'' But the absence of a script (David McKenna and Roger Pullis received screenplay credits) wasn't the largest of Mr. Clark's problems. Because of budgetary constraints, ''literally two days before we started, my shooting schedule was cut from 30 days to 23.''

''My first reaction was to think it was impossible,'' he continued. ''But what do you do? You either shut down or accept the challenge. And luckily I'm probably at my best in the heat of battle.''

This may sound like an immodest self-assessment, but it's one his colleagues endorse. ''Larry was just so cool, all the time,'' said Mr. Renfro. ''The climax of the movie is the murder scene, and somebody ordered the wrong lights, so we only had one night to shoot it. And Larry was just so calm, saying, 'O.K., you go here, you go there, now you lie down in the back of the car in a fetal position.' '' Mr. Clark shot 36 setups that night, and produced a harrowing sequence. ''In my mind, from the point I became interested in the story, I thought that would be the key scene,'' Mr. Murphy said. ''I thought it would have to be as brutal as when it happened. Well, it is. I can't watch it.''

BUT the violence is only part of what makes the film hard to take; it isn't easy watching characters so blindly and eagerly degrade themselves. There are sex scenes, but the characters engage in them almost passionlessly, mechanically, and Mr. Clark's decision to film the sequences documentary style, with minimal lighting, inoculates the moments against any accidental eroticism or prettification. ''It was a very difficult decision to do the nudity,'' Ms. Miner said, ''but Larry explained why the scenes were important, that we had to show what the kids' lives were like. And I trusted him.'' Ms. Miner has moments in which she is naked with a lost look in her eyes that are utterly dismaying.

Like all directors, Mr. Clark had to endure some studio oversight, although it seems that he was able to use his authority as a recognized artist to limit the supervision.